Friction 2D Animation ✏️, SDF Engine 🧮, Global Game Jam 🎮
⚙️ Tech & Tools Spotlight
Meet Friction: Lightning-Fast Open-Source 2D Animation for Games
Friction, a rapidly maturing fork of the abandoned ENVE project, is shaping up to be an impressive open-source 2D animation suite. It combines a high-performance Skia-based engine with pro tools like Dissolve Node morphing, interactive transform gizmos, advanced snapping, frame remapping, and a smart layer stack. Power users get JavaScript expressions, a built-in code editor, and a command palette for fast workflows. With FFmpeg-powered exports (ProRes, AV1, VP9, MP4) and animated SVG, it fits nicely into modern gamedev pipelines.
Moveable Holes and Vanishing Tunnels: Inside Mike Turitzin’s SDF Engine
Mike Turitzin is building an SDF-based game engine that makes world geometry truly dynamic, not just destructible. His tech supports smooth and sharp real-time edits plus wild non-destructive tricks like movable holes and tunnels that disappear behind you. In a detailed video, he explains SDF fundamentals, his inspirations (including Dreams on PS4), and what makes his approach unique. Turitzin is already developing a full game on this tech, with more updates on the way.
🎨 Game Art & UI Inspiration
From The Sims to Unreal: Building 12 Memory Lane’s Shifting Mansion
Forget-Me-Not Studios detail the full environment art journey behind 12 Memory Lane, a first-person mystery set in a warm but unsettling English country house. Each room was composed like a cinematic shot, built from Sims 4 prototypes into Unreal 5 blockouts, then populated with carefully optimized props and narrative clues. The team explains their modular architecture, smart material setups, and atmospheric lighting tricks to keep performance high in a dense interior. Along the way they share hard-earned lessons on pre-production, communication, and making gameplay-critical objects stand out.
Atlus-Style Menus in Godot: Downloadable Prototype & UI Inspiration
Godot developer Flynsarmy has created an Atlus-inspired menu prototype in Godot 4.6 dev2, where simply focusing on menu items changes the character’s actions. The full project, including source code and assets, is available to download and study. The piece also curates several other standout menu examples—3D, comic-book-style, immersive inventory, and more—offering a compact inspiration pack for anyone designing stylish game UI.
🌍 Events & Live Game Design
Global Game Jam 2026: Dates, Milestones, and How to Join
Global Game Jam continues its explosive growth, drawing about 40,000 participants a year across 800 sites in 100 countries and tracking toward 500,000 lifetime jammers. After surpassing 100,000 total games created in 2025, the event returns January 26–February 1, with a 48-hour jam window and a theme revealed just two days in advance. New executive director Maria Burns Ortiz frames the jam as a celebration of creativity and community amid industry uncertainty. Jam site registration remains open until January 12 on the official site.
How Candy Crush Balances Calm and Competition in a Live Game
Senior game designer Mick Heijkens reveals how Candy Crush keeps millions engaged across 20,000+ levels using a “spectrum of flavours” approach to fun. Instead of rigidly targeting casual or competitive segments, King leans on flexible meta systems like Candy Royale, Win Streak, and a revamped Saga Map to support shifting player motivations. Player feedback even led to removing timed levels to better fit the game’s calm, accessible identity. For Heijkens, strong live game design “is never static.”